Like all the classic fairytales you know and love, any reality television show worth its weight in gold will have heroes and villains — the people you love and those you just love to hate.
This season, Celebrity Treasure Island has handed viewers perhaps its most dastardly villain in television presenter Jordan Vandermade.
"You're welcome," he laughs when we catch up on the phone.
But, in a moment sure to make viewers who've spent the season thus far praying for his demise cheer loudly, Jordan the Terrible (we're still spit-balling villainous names) is no more, eliminated from the game in one of the most intense elimination battles the show's ever seen — fitting, for the man who's been front and centre for some of the show's biggest moments.
But during our exclusive chat, Jordan admits being Celebrity Treasure Island's resident baddie has come with baggage.
"I've felt the full force of those who think this is actually reality," he tells me.
"It's been real. That's kind of the only way I can summarise it. Relentless and unexpected, bro."
It's a great reminder that amongst the jaw-dropping television are real people — but, boy, there's no pretending it hasn't made for great viewing.
Jordan made waves early on in the game. Winning the first challenge in episode one meant he became his team's captain, a role he took on with the earnestness and seriousness of a lieutenant leading his soldiers into battle.
"It was such a mistake to be captain right from the get-go and genuinely not understanding the responsibility and the admin that comes along with it," he explains.
"The anxiety of having to put people up for elimination — sheesh, I started to feel like the captaincy gave me this separation from the other guys, and the whole plan of just going in and giving it a go changed completely once I won that first challenge and was made captain right from the start."
Jordan's desire to win, sometimes at all costs, created some of his biggest moments on the show (Source: TVNZ). (Source: Supplied)
For the former athlete – he was ranked number four in the country for tennis as a teenager and won bronze at the World Athletics Championships in decathlon — everything that made him a champion also worked against him in an environment like this.
"The intensity that you see, and the competitiveness and the seriousness, probably my fault as well," he admits.
"I didn't talk to the camera or to my teammates about what I was going through because I was internalising it and trying to navigate it and deal with it myself. But a lot of it was that anxiety — as captain, I was constantly stressing out about whether I was going to get it wrong."
That stress meant constant team talks – plenty, we're told, that the viewers didn't even see on camera.
"He's very serious," comedian Eli Matthewson told viewers in the premiere episode.
"He's constantly game time."
Jordan knew before he even started the game that could be his downfall.
"I think this is the perfect little experiment for a personality like me. Like, literally, without even realising it, that competitiveness comes out, and it's just who I am.
"In a team environment that want to win, when you put it in with different personalities and different people who aren't from that world, you don't realise how people can take it or how it comes across. For me, it was just not even really realising — I was just like, 'let's go out and win.'"
It was that desire to win — sometimes at all costs — that created some of his biggest moments on the show.
There was the time he threw buckets of cold water into the faces of opposing teammates instead of into the trough he was meant to be aiming for.
"I'm Māori, my iwi's Tūhoe, and it was rough to watch it play out in a way that would make the viewers think that I would literally sit there and pummel Tame Iti with water," he explains to me.
"You hear that it's raining, and you hear that it's cold, but you didn't hear anything about the gale force winds that were blowing against me, and the water was literally just coming back onto us."
For Jordan, it's the context that's key.
"It was well over a two hour challenge, and after what felt like about 150 attempts at getting that water into the trough, just throwing the water down to splash them was a genuine attempt that it might get one of them to let go of the rope."
OK, but what about his decision to blindside team mate Mary Lambie by not using the Mercy Card on her — a card that would've saved her from elimination?
He was adamant on the show — both to his team's faces, and to producers in his confessionals — that he would use it on any member of Kārearea.
"I'm a man of my word," was the way he put it on the show.
So what happened to his word?
"I'd had a few conversations with people," he tells me in way of an explanation, "that had talked to me about if I did play the card, that would mean that I didn't have it moving forward, we're heading towards merge, is Mary really the right person to use the card on when there's other members who might be better for your game?
"It was honestly nothing personal. But for me, that morning was probably when I really started to mull over that decision and it started to make me think."
But Jordan learnt the hard way — in reality television if you don't verbalise your thinking, the audience never has the opportunity to try and understand the way you're playing the game.
"I now have a real understanding of how important it is to get stuff on camera!" he admits.
"So that's on me."
It's a decision that's still having ramifications in the real world — I understand things were tense at the show's launch party between Jordan and Mary.
And in her own interview with this website, Mary told us "to say 'I'm going to save everyone', and then change his mind, I think was actually really cowardly."
Jordan gets it.
"Yeah, I felt sick about it. It felt horrible," he says.
"I know Mary took it personally, and there's no hard feelings from my part about that — how you take it is how you take it. I completely understand her reasonings for why she's still feeling those things."
But in a strange turn of events, we saw an immediate shift in Jordan's personality once he was forced to give up his captaincy to alliance member Eli Matthewson.
"For me, it had gotten to a point where I was sick of being captain, I was sick of feeling like my energy and my stress levels were hindering my own game. I'd just had enough, man," he admits.
"It was just such a relief to be what I wanted to be at the start of this whole thing, which was just one of the team."
So when he went up for elimination against musical theatre legend Nick Afoa, he was in a much lighter headspace.
Perhaps that inner peace gave him the strength to push as hard as he did — standing on two wooden footholds on the side of a wooden structure while holding onto two suspended ropes.
Watching it play out on TV, Jordan sees the poeticism in it — "It looked like I was hanging on a crucifixion cross or something!" he laughs in hindsight.
But this is an endurance battle the likes this show has never seen before — for almost two hours and 15 minutes, the two men push themselves to their limit.
"Man, it's just crazy — physical, mental, endurance, draining, and I never knew that it would go as long as it did," he tells me.
But Jordan made the decision to call it quits, handing the win to Nick.
"I really just thought of my daughter and my partner, and kind of the things that had built up and led to that, and the vibe around camp, I realised that the floodgates had opened, and I was ready to go.
"It was my time, man."
He knew captain Eli Matthewson had that Mercy Card up his sleeve, but he tells me he'd made peace with the fact that he might not use it on him — after all, the card had been promised and reneged by the man himself just a few episodes earlier.
But Eli came through with the goods and told host Jayden Daniels he was using the card to save Jordan.
"After being saved by Eli, I was just taking a couple of breaths to take that moment in," he recounts.
"And then I just see this figure stand up from the other team's bench."
That figure was Shortland Street legend Blair Strang, who is proving himself to be a fan favourite this season.
You see, Blair had a card of his own — and this one was a doozy. An advantage blocker, which gave him the power to obstruct the Mercy Card from being played.
"Yeah, it was pretty crazy, man," Jordan remembers.
"It's a game. It's a game, and he had an ace card up his sleeve, and honestly, good on him. Good on him.
"For me, never one second of ill-feeling towards him for doing what he did. He used it to get rid of me from the game, and that's the way it works."
He knows at some point, everyone has to turn on someone.
"You can't go all the way to the end and have all your friends with you or the people that are going to be threatening to knock you out. So it was smart," Jordan says.
"But it was honestly a cyclone of emotions all in the space of about two minutes. It was crazy."
I tell him, though, that for all the craziness and intensity and perceived villainous moves he made this season, there was something beautiful about watching him exit the game with grace, with dignity, and with his head held high.
"Thanks, bro," he tells me.
"It was emotional, but I'm glad it comes across. Hopefully, it gives the people at home a chance to go 'oh! Maybe he's not as villainous as he came across on the show.'"
He's pretty honest during our conversation — realising he's the villain of this season was an unexpected twist in his journey, and it hasn't always been easy to watch back or to be on the receiving end of the public's reactions.
"Seeing things put together on this side of things has been tough, and yeah, there's been some pretty low days," he admits, "but I've learnt so much about myself."
And so, how does he review the experience now, with everything that's unfolded?
"Yeah, genuinely so lucky to have had the opportunity to be on something like this. Like how crazy to go to one of the most beautiful parts of the country and essentially have this really incredible, crazy camp with a whole bunch of people that I got to form genuine friendships with.
"It was just a super lucky moment, and I'm so thankful I got the opportunity to do it. It was so much fun."
And then, he says something that really surprises me.
"If I ever had the opportunity to do it again, I know what I'd do differently," he laughs.
So maybe Celebrity Treasure Island has not seen the last of Jordan Vandermade.
Matty McLean is a former winner of Celebrity Treasure Island, and will be interviewing the eliminated contestants for 1news.co.nz
You can watch the current season Monday-Wednesday at 7.30pm on TVNZ 2 or TVNZ+
SHARE ME